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Changing the libsensors License

When lm-sensors 2 was written, all the code was placed under the GPL license (version 2), including the library, libsensors. Over time, a number of developers complained to us that this made it impossible for them to link their application to libsensors due to license incompatibilities. Indeed, a library released under the GPL can only be used by code itself released under the GPL. This excludes proprietary tools but also tools released under BSD-style licenses and libraries released under the LGPL, for example. If libsensors was released under the LGPL, this wouldn't be a problem any longer.

For a long time we have been ignoring the issue, because it isn't easy to solve. Basically we need to get the approval of all copyright holders and preferably all other significant contributors if we want to be able to change the license. That being said, the problem is real, so it would be really, really great if we could change the license of libsensors someday. So we are starting a 1-year campaign to collect as many approvals as possible from all past contributors to libsensors. On July 1st, 2010, if we managed to get the approval of all copyright holders and no disapproval from any past contributor to libsensors, next releases of libsensors will be placed under the LGPL license (version 2.1).

Position of the Copyright Holders

Frodo Looijaard agrees (2009-06-28)

Jean Delvare agrees (2009-06-28)

Adrian Baugh agrees (2009-06-28)

Mark M. Hoffman didn't express his opinion yet

Position of the Contributors

Andre Prendel (2009-07-05)

Darrick J. Wong

Hans de Goede agrees (2009-07-03)

Kyösti Mälkki

Mark D. Studebaker agrees (2009-06-29)

Merlin Hughes

Philip Edelbrock agrees (2009-06-29)

Rudolf Marek

Bob Schlaermann

Martin Knoblauch

John Morris

Abraham vd Merwe

George Spelvin agrees (2009-06-30)

If you did contribute to libsensors and are not listed there, please contact us to be added, and let us know your position about the proposed license change.